Soy Cuba

Soy Cuba is yet another film made from the view of Russians about Cuba and the lead up to the Cuban revolution. Which seems to be quite an odd thing, wouldn’t one need to be apart of that nationality to really understand the full impact of a revolution? To get back on track, Soy Cuba depicts different peoples journeys before the revolution occurs and makes the audience really feel sympathy towards these people and how they are living. The movie makes one feel like this revolution did need to happen for the sake of these peoples well being.

The movie depicts very well the struggle for lower classes, the ghettos where many people were forced to live, and the American influence on people who did not seem to want it. American was very much portrayed as the big brother that picked on the little brother, which depending on ones perspective, they could be seen that way. The economic depiction of these people coincides with Susan Eckstein’s description of what the economic world was before the revolution. Her details and charts could get extremely confusing to someone who is not an economist but it was clear that the point she wanted to make was that the revolution was a very good thing for the people economically. The rich might not have benefited and therefore most fled the country and it equalized the country greatly. This thought is a very encouraging one to read after seeing a movie so filled with sadness and economic struggles.

Through both the Eckstein and the de la Fuente articles the phrase “with all and for all” seems to pop up frequently, especially in the Fuente one. This idea of Cuban’s being segregated by race and racial issues is not a topic that could easily be picked up by the movie, which is quite distressing. Both articles deal greatly with how much of an issue the race question was in Cuba, a white Cuba versus a mixed Cuba. The movie does not seem to show this that clearly, it depicts Cubans as being united in knowing that a revolution needs to occur to better themselves more for economic reasons than for racial equality. However, this unity is expressed well in the Fuente article when it says “They were neither black nor white, but Cubans”. That line seems to boil everything in the movie down even though race did not seem like such a huge factor. When it came down to the need or revolution, race did not matter. Making a better life for their selves and making a better Cuba did matter.

The best line from the Fuente article was a citation that he made, "Cuba's soul is mestizo (half- breed),"Nicolas Guillen (1972, vol. 1: 114) wrote in 1931, "and it is from the soul, not the skin, that we derive our definite color. Someday it will be called 'Cuban color.'" It feels as if this is the best depiction of the movie and of Cuba. In the end race did not matter, revolution did and a revolution could not occur with just one racial group backing it. They needed the whole of Cuba to participate. Racial lines could have broken the entire movement but it did not and that seems to be the moral of the story.

Gabriela & Social Change

Gabriela is a very sexual heated movie that has obvious and underlying themes of change and progress. This progress comes in many forms and really shapes the entire movie. Gabriela herself is a woman of change, she fled the drought and shows up in a new town covered in mud and looking for a job that could help her progress in her life. Here is where she meets mister Nacib. In his eyes she’s the perfect woman, beautiful, skilled in the culinary field, and willing to negotiate her own costs. All things considered, she is a pretty modern day woman for 1925. She loves becoming his mistress and does not seem enthused by the idea of marriage. Nacib is the one who wants to marry her and look proper in front of his gentleman friends which is the point that causes so much tension and drama for Nacib and the people of this time.

            At this time period it is more about how people see you and perceive you than anything else, hence by this drama of “crimes of passion” comes into play. From the beginning of the movie you see a man walk in on his wife and a dentist and shoot them both. It’s a scandal throughout the town because some people seem to believe that he was in the right to do what he did and that it makes him a man. Others believe that it was wrong, in the movie it is the manly political crowd who believe that he was in the right to do what he did. No one even attends these people funerals when they are brought through the street; everyone just gawks at their dead bodies being carried through the streets. Besse talks all about this social change in Brazil and how it was not brought about because people cared that these women were being shot but because they cared about the social structure of the family and what good it could do for politics and the stability of normal life. This entire movement to get crimes of passion outlawed took years in the real world but this movie condenses it down so people can really get the feel for the affect that this had. The movie portrays quite well that it was not about women’s well being but about politics. In the end the man who killed his wife and the dentist is charged with murder as compared to let off the hook because he was just in a fit of passion or rage. This is the social changed that happened during this time.

            Nacib is at first ridiculed for not killing Gabriela when he finds her in bed with another man but when he proves that the marriage was false to begin with, he is now socially accepted by society again. It then is evident that he can keep Gabriela as a mistress but not as a wife and he will be allowed to fit into the society that he so desperately wants to be a part of. Overall, this movie depicts this particular social change very well and shows the attitudes of the people involved very nicely.

Camila - the melodramtic wonder

The move Camila directed by Maria Luisa Bemberg is a melodramatic love story of Camila O’Gorman and Jesuit priest, Ladislao Gutierrez. It is the stereotypical story of a young woman who is swept off her feet by a man that she can not dream of being with. Therefore, he is precisely who she dreams of being with, and when her dream come true, all havoc breaks loose and social norms are thrown out the window all for love. Romantic right? Not when the end results in both lovers dead from breaking said social norms, that tends to take the romance down a few notches.

            After reading Stevens’ article on the movie, one gets the distinct sense that the movie is very historically accurate which is quite refreshing. Throughout the movie they use actual lines from O’Gorman’s actual letter to Rosas and discusses how much of the story that we know of Camila and Ladislao was learned by her jailor. The article really gives a good historical background for both of these main characters families. The article also sheds a different light on Camila’s father. In the movie he comes off as a tyrant and just an overall not so nice of a person. In this letter to Rosas, he does not appear to be sentencing his own daughter to death like the movie portrays him, it is evident however, that he was more concerned with saving his family’s name than saving his daughter. Dore’s reading which was honestly a bit confusing backs up this ideology. It seems as if around the time of Camila’s life that marriage and family changed and that the patriarch of the family really started to hold more control over that aspect of life which fits in perfectly with this story and his reaction to her running away with a priest.

            The most interesting thing about the movie was the perspective by which it was told. Both Hart and Stevens make it clear through quotes that Bemberg wanted Camila to be a progressive, strong willed woman who knew exactly what she was doing. She comes off as being the seducer, not the stereotypical helpless woman. This role seems doubtful but all of these articles seem to back this perception up. Camila loved Ladislao, she made sure that her jailor knew this; she knew exactly what she was getting into and was okay with it. The movie does add a clever spin by making Ladislao seem like the lady in the relationship. He always seems to be so scared and reliant on either Christ or Camila that his love almost seems pathetic. Bemberg definitely achieved her goal of making Camila a strong woman throughout the entire movie.

            In conclusion, this movie stayed oddly accurate given the information that is available on the real life Camila and Ladislao. This accuracy is quite refreshing and told in a way that it still captures your heart and your mind. By the end of the movie, you are rooting for the couple; you do not want them to die by laws that are cruel and unjust. Overall, this movie was very well done and hit that melodramatic feel that the director was looking for.